(“ZETA”)

Junius,The Crisis of Social-Democracy. Supplement:
“Theses on the Tasks of International Social-Democracy.” Zurich,
1916, 109pp. (105–09,theses).

“Introduction”dated January 2, 1916: the pamphlet is stated
to have been written in April 1915.

p.6: “The capitulation of international Social-Democracy ... the most
stupid thing would be to conceal it”....

p.24: “Two lines of development ... lead ... to this war.” 1) 1870,
N.B., the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, and 2)
imperialist development in the last 25 years.

||N.B.
p. 28: B\"ulow’s speech on December 11, 1899. A clear imperialist
programme: the British have “Greater Britain”, the French their “New
France”, the Russians—Asia, the Germans “Greater Germany”.

pp.31–33: excellent account of the plunder of Turkish peasants in
Asia Minor by German finance capital.

p.42: ...“The existence of only two countries—Belgium
and Serbia—is at stake in the present war”.

p.43: In Russia, imperialism is “not” so much
“economic expansion” as “the political interest of the
state”.

p.48: The break-up of Austria was accelerated “by the
emergence of independent national states in the immediate neighbourhood of
the monarchy”....

...“Theinternal un-viability of Austria was shown”....

...“TheHapsburg monarchy is not the political organisation of a
bourgeois state, but only the loose syndicate of cliques of social
parasites” (49)....

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...“An inevitable dilemma: either the Hapsburg monarchy or the capitalist
development of the Balkan countries” (49)....
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N.B.|||
...“Historically, the liquidation of Austria-Hungary is but the
continuation of the disintegration of Turkey, but at the same time it is a
requirement of the historical process of development” (49–50).

“Germanimperialism, chained to two decomposing corpses, steered
straight into the world war” (50).

...“For... an alleged attempt (at high treason)... Duala Manga Bell
of the Cameroons was hanged quietly, amidst the noise of war, without the
troublesome procedure of a court trial.... The Reichstag group shrouded the
body of Chief Duala in a discreet silence” (56).

p.60: two causes of the 1905 defeat:

?|||
(1) its “huge” political programme; “some (of the problems), such as the
agrarian question, are altogether insoluble within the framework of the
present social order”....

(2)the aid of European reaction....

||
71: “The dangers to the ‘free development of Germany’ do not lie in
Russia, as the Reichstag group thought, but in Germany herself”... (and,
incidentally, the expression: “the Zabern policy”, p. 71).

74:“Does not the socialist principle of the right of nations to
self-determination imply that every people is entitled and bound to defend
its freedom and independence?”... (75) “certainly, a people that
surrenders to an external enemy is contemptible”....

75:A quotation from The Civil War in France: “The
highest heroic effort of which old society is still capable is national
war; and this is now proved to be a mere governmental
humbug”....[2]

76:“In bourgeois society, therefore, invasion and class struggle are
not opposites, as the official legend has it, but one is the means and
expression of the other. And if for the ruling classes invasion represents
a well-tried means against the class struggle, for the ascending classes
the sharpest class struggle still proves to be the best means against
invasion”.... The history of the Italian towns in the Middle
Ages, and especially 1793.

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77: The same applies to self-determination: “True, socialism recognises
the right of every nation to independence and freedom, to independent
mastery of its destinies. But it is a real mockery of socialism when the
modern capitalist states are presented as the
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expression of this right of the nations to self-determination. In which of
these states has the nation yet determined the forms and conditions of its
(sic!)
||
national, political or social existence?” By “self-determination of the
German people”, Marx, Engels, Lassalle under stood “the united, great
German republic”. [Modern Germany has been built (N.B.) (77) “on the
ruins of the German people’s right to national (N.B.) self-determination
(N.B.)”....]

77...“or is it, perhaps, the Third Republic with colonial possessions
in four continents, and colonial atrocities in two of them, that is an
expression of the ‘self-determination’ of the French nation?”...

78:“In the socialist sense of this concept, there is not a single
free nation, if its existence as a state rests on the enslavement of other
peoples,
|| N.B.
for the colonial peoples, too, are reckoned as peoples and as members of
the state. International socialism recognises the right of free,
independent and equal nations, but it is only socialism that can create
such nations, and only it can realise the right of nations to
self-determination. And this socialist slogan serves like all the other
socialist slogans not to justify the existing order of things, but to
indicate the way forward, and to stimulate the proletariat in its active,
revolutionary policy of transformation”....

?|||
In the imperialist situation of today there cannot be any more “national
wars of defence” (78)... to ignore this situation means “to build on
sand”.

Hence“the question of defence and attack, the question of who is to
‘blame’, is quite meaningless” (78); for both France and Great Britain it
is not a matter of “self-defence”, they are defending “not their
national, but their world political position”....

Imperialistpolicy is an international phenomenon, the result of “the
world-wide development of capital” (79).... “It is only from this
starting-point that the question of ’national defence’ in the present war
can be correctly posed” (80).... The system of alliances, military
interests, etc., immediately involveimperialist
interests and countries.... “Finally, the very fact that today all
capitalist states have colonial possessions which in time of war, even if
it begins as a ‘national war of defence’, are in any case drawn into the
war from military-strategic considerations” ... the “holy war” in
Turkey, the instigation of uprisings in the colonies...—“this fact, too,
today automatically converts every war into an imperialist world
conflagration” (82)....

Theexample of Serbia (behind which stands Russia), Holland (her
colonies and so forth).... “In this way, it is always the
historical situation created by present-day imperialism that determines the
character of the war for the different countries, and it is because of this
situation that nowadays national wars of defence are in general no longer
possible” (84)....

Hequotes K. Kautsky: Patriotism and Social-Democracy, 1907,
p. 16 in particular, that “under these conditions a war for the defence of
national freedom can no longer be expected anywhere” (Kautsky, quoted by
Junius, p. 85). (K. Kautsky, pp. 12–14 on “national problems”, that
they can be solved “only (N.B.) after (N.B.) the
victory of the proletariat”.) [K. Kautsky, p. 23. N.B.]

Whatthen is the task of Social-Democracy? Not to be “passive”.
|||| ?
“Instead of hypocritically dressing the imperialist war in the cloak of
national defence, we should take seriously [author’s italics] the
right of nations to self-determination and national defence and use them as
a revolutionary lever against [author’s italics] the imperialist
war (85). The most elementary requirement of national defence is that the
nation should take defence into its own hands. The first step in that
direction is a militia, i.e., not merely immediate arming of the
entire adult male population, but above all the decision by the people of
the question of war and peace;
||| ??? N.B. ||
it implies also immediate abolition of all political disfranchisement,
since the people’s defence must be based on the greatest political
freedom. And it was the prime duty of Social-Democracy to proclaim these
genuine national defence measures, and strive for their realisation”
(86). But the Social-Democrats abandoned the demand for a militia until
after the war!!! although we have said that “only a militia”
is capable of defending the fatherland!!!

“Ourteachers had a different conception of defence of the
fatherland”... (Marx in The Civil War, in support of the national
war of the Commune)... and ... Frederick Engels in 1892, in
support of a repetition of 1793....
|||| N.B. ||
But alongside this: “When Engels wrote that, he had in mind a
situation quite different from the present one” (87)—prior to the
Russian revolution. “He [Engels] had in mind a genuine national war of
defence by a suddenly attacked Germany” (87)....

|||??
And further: “Yes, it is the duty of the Social-Democrats to defend their
country during a great historical crisis. And precisely therein lies the
grave guilt” of the Social-Democratic Reichstag group....
||| ??
“They did leave the fatherland unprotected in the hour of its
greatest peril. For their first duty to the fatherland in that hour was to
show the fatherland what was really behind the present imperialist
war;
N.B. ||||
to sweep away the web of patriotic and diplomatic lies covering up this
encroachment on the fatherland; to proclaim loudly and clearly that for the
German people both victory and defeat in the present war are equally
fatal...; to proclaim the necessity of immediately arming the people and of
allowing the people to decide the question of war and peace ... finally, to
oppose the imperialist war programme, which is to preserve Austria and
Turkey, i.e., perpetuate reaction in Europe and in Germany, with the old,
truly national programme of the patriots a nd democrats of 1848, the
programme of Marx,
??? |||||
Engels and Lassalle—the slogan of a united, great German Republic. This
is the banner that should have been unfurled before the country, which
would have been a truly national banner of liberation, and which would
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have been in accord with the best traditions of Germany and with the
international class policy of the proletariat” (88).

__100: |
...“Hence, the grave dilemma—the interests of the fatherland or the
international solidarity of the proletariat—the tragic conflict which
prompted our parliamentarians to side, ‘with a heavy heart’, with the
imperialist war, is purely imaginary, a bourgeois-nationalist fiction. On
the contrary, there is complete harmony between the interests of the
country and the class interests of the proletarian International, both in
time of war and in time of peace: both war and peace demand the most
energetic development of the class struggle, the most determined fight for
the Social-Democratic programme” (89)....

[DITTO:| ]
But what should the Party have done? Call a mass strike? Or call for
refusal to serve in the army? It would be absurd to try to answer. The
revolution cannot be “made”. “Prescriptions and recipes of a technical
nature” would be “ridiculous” (90); it is not a question of
such things, but of a clear political slogan. (Expatiates against
technique, etc., etc., “small conspiratorial circles”, etc.)
(N.B. 101–02).

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§ VIII (93-104) deals especially with the question of “victory or
defeat”, endeavours to prove that both are equally bad (ruin, new wars,
etc.). To choose between them would be “a hopeless choice between two lots
of thrashing” (98)... “except in one single case: if by its revolutionary
intervention the international proletariat upsets all the calculations”
(of both imperialisms) (98).... There can be no status quo (99), no going
“backwards”, only forward to the victory of the proletariat. Not hare
brained schemes of disarmament, not “utopias” or “partial reforms”
(99), but the struggle against imperialism.

p.102—the threat of “mass collapse of
||| but America?? and Japan??
the European proletariat” (102).... “When the hour strikes, the signal
for the social revolution that will set mankind free will come only from
Europe, only from the oldest capitalist countries. Only the British,
French, Belgian, German, Russian and Italian workers together can lead the
army of the exploited and enslaved in the five continents of the world”
(103).